What is Exchange Server 2007?

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is the next version of Microsoft Exchange. Microsoft Exchange is the industry’s leading e-mail, calendaring, and unified messaging server. The release of Exchange Server 2007 is closely aligned with the 2007 Microsoft Office release. Together, these products deliver a best-in-class enterprise messaging and collaboration solution.

How does Exchange Server 2007 integrate with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007?

Outlook 2007 provides the most complete e-mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks functionality available in an e-mail client that is compatible with Exchange. When Outlook 2007 is used with Exchange Server 2007, users benefit from the new Scheduling Assistant that automates time-consuming meeting and resource scheduling, the ability to plan and customize out-of-office communications, and managed e-mail folders that facilitate compliance with internal and regulatory policies. Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also combine to enhance security by offering features that are easy to use and let users confidently send and receive sensitive business communications through e-mail.

Key features of Exchange 2007 users:

A More Robust Outlook Web Access (OWA) Client

The Web-based e-mail client offers many enhancements that provide better messaging for mobile workers.  Outlook Web Access (OWA) will look different and have many more and new features including:

• Users can manage their mobile devices through OWA.
• Drag and drop and right-click items in OWA now (IE only)
• Better calendar, scheduling, and searching in OWA
• Improved reminders and notification features
• Out of office and scheduled auto-replies in OWA now
• Users can now connect to shared calendars and mailboxes a lot easier from OWA via a simple drop-down box
• WebReady Document Viewing: OWA/2007 is now nearly 97% feature complete to the full blown Outlook 2007 client including Word email formatting and the ability to open any Microsoft Office document attachment even if you do not have Office installed.
• Users are now prompted when their password is about to expire

Users will also have the ability to choose between ‘Premium’ or ‘Light’ versions of OWA.  This option is only available for Internet Explorer 6.x or higher users, otherwise ‘Light’ will be the default for other browsers.  OWA Light provides fewer features and faster logon times for slower connections (i.e. Dial-up).

• New security options also allow longer periods of inactivity before logging you off.
• The timeout depends on if you choose 'Public' or 'Private' at the login screen.
• If you select "Private Computer", your session will timeout after 8 hours.
• If you select "Public or shared computer" your session will be closed after 15 minutes.

Outlook Anywhere

The ‘Outlook Anywhere’ feature for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 allows Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 clients to connect to their Exchange servers over the Internet by using the RPC over HTTP Windows networking component.  The address for ‘Outlook Anywhere’ will be the same as accessing OWA;

Faculty/staff - owa.eku.edu
Students - stuowa.eku.edu

There are several benefits to using Outlook Anywhere via Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 externally to access your Exchange messaging infrastructure:

• Remote access to Exchange servers from the Internet.
• Simplified same URL and namespace that you use for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and Outlook Web Access.
• Unauthenticated requests from Outlook cannot access Exchange servers, thus heightened security.
• Certification Authority signed (more security)
• You do not have to use a virtual private network (VPN) to access Exchange servers across the Internet.

Changes to note:

Initial mailbox move

Faculty and Staff mailboxes were moved during winter break 2007

Student mailboxes will be moved from the old system to the new system during the spring break 2008.  The days we will begin moving mailboxes will start Monday, March 10th, 2008 and could last till Friday, March 14th 2008.

Users of Outlook clients, upon opening Outlook for the first time after the transition, you may get the following error:

This is normal as Outlook is remapping your ‘Exchange Server’ setting to point to the new server.

Outlook Users

Outlook in Office 2000 or below is no longer supported on Exchange 2007.  If you are running a version this old then you should immediately upgrade to Office XP, Office 2003, or preferable Office 2007 if possible.

POP3 and IMAP Users

Remotely configured mail clients setup to use POP3 or IMAP will not be effected by this move and will still continue to use the SMTP address ekumail.eku.edu

MAC Users

All Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage clients should be set to use ekumail.eku.edu.  This change can be made at anytime including today.  We recommend doing this before the holiday break in case you need help from the Helpdesk to make the change.  If you don’t make this change then you will not be able to connect to your email after December 26 without making this change.  Also, please note that the ‘security’ check box must be check in order to work properly:

Exchange Server Name Change - Faculty/Staff

The new Exchange server name for faculty and staff will be FSEMAIL.  This change won’t really affect most so if you never knew the old name then you don’t need to worry about the new one.  This piece of information is mostly for College/Building Admins and the IT Helpdesk who use the server name to initial setup email clients for users.  Please note that after December 26th, 2007 ‘FACSTAFF’ will no longer be a valid server name.

Exchange Server Name Change - Student

The new Exchange server name for students will be STUEMAIL.  This change won’t really affect most so if you never knew the old name then you don’t need to worry about the new one.  This piece of information is mostly for College/Building Admins and the IT Helpdesk who use the server name to initial setup email clients for users.  Please note that after December 26th, 2007 ‘FACSTAFF’ will no longer be a valid server name.

Mobile Clients

Windows Based Mobile devices will be prompted to re-sync after your mailbox has been moved.  Accept all prompts and warnings to successfully connect to the new server.
Blackberry clients should notice no change other than the scheduled outage.

Mailbox size limit - Faculty/Staff

The default email quota for faculty and staff accounts has been doubled to be increased from 150MB to 300MB effective immediately after your mailbox has been moved.

Mailbox size limit - Student

The default email quota for student accounts has been doubled to be increased from 100MB to 200MB effective immediately after your mailbox has been moved.

Differences between OWA Light & Premium

What you get in OWA Light:

• Faster logon times for slow connections (i.e. Dial-up)
• Works across a diverse set of OS/Browser combinations, including the following (these are the combinations that we support and test against; other combinations may work, but are not actively supported):
• Operating Systems: Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Window ME, Windows 98, Mac OS X, and Linux
• Browsers: Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, IE7, IE6, IE5.5, IE5.01 and IE5.2 on Mac
• Redesigned from the ground up to offer the best accessibility possible for blind (screen reader) and low-vision (high contrast settings) users.
• New, redesigned UI, for a cleaner look, and easier use.

The big things that you get in Premium that are not in Light (in no particular order and not exhaustive):

• Tasks module
• Only the text of the task items can be read through OWA Light; task specific properties will not necessarily be available.
• Search for mail items; For Beta2, OWA Light users only get search in Contacts and Address Book. We will have mail search for RTM.
• Reminders
• HTML composing of messages; compose in Plain Text only; Users still get HTML formatting for reading
• Weekly view in Calendar; Light is daily view only
• Free/Busy grid in Appointment/Meeting Scheduling Assistant.  You do still get "Suggested Times", which is much more pronounced in OWA Light, to help users, including blind and low-vision users, to schedule times that work well for everyone.
• Account Quota information

For more detailed feature comparison please visit: http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/13/428901.aspx